Oleh Shpudeiko is a music composer and sound artist who records as Heinali. He specialises in electronic music and modular synthesis, taking inspiration from Early music and medieval polyphony.
Oleh writes music for games, films, choreography performances, creates sound art installations and performs live shows. Amongst his works is award-winning music for the video game BOUND by Plastic/Sony Santa Monica, compositions and sound art installations commissioned by The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), The National Art Museum of Ukraine (NAMU) and The Museum of Odesa Modern Art (MSIO).
His 2020 MADRIGALS album marries this interest with his love for Early music featuring improvisations on period instruments over polyphonic textures generated on a modular synthesiser. It was named contemporary album of the month in The Guardian, shortlisted for the Aprize Music Award and Shevchenko National Prize. Heinali’s latest album KYIV ETERNAL, released in 2023, is an intimate tribute to his home city under attack and a side-step from his established practice of reimagining early music. It features pre-war field recordings of Kyiv juxtaposed with ambient ‘memory loops’ from Oleh’s archives. Richard Allen marked it as ‘the first definitive album about the war’ in A Closer Listen. Jason Farago described it in The New York Times as ‘a ravishing audioscape of the Ukrainian capital’ and ‘a citywide portrait of beautiful resolution’.
Heinali performs his music on a modular synthesiser developing and operating a patch that enables him to work with generative polyphony and counterpoint in real-time improvisation, taking inspiration from the polyphonic textures of medieval music. Pitchfork featured Heinali’s wartime performance in a bomb shelter in Lviv, Ukraine, that was loosely based on the 12th-century organa of the Notre-Dame school in the best sets of 2022, described by Philip Sherburne: ‘In any other context, it would be profoundly beautiful; given the war raging outside, this quiet act of perseverance takes on even greater significance—part protest, part song of mourning’.
Download press photo here. Credit: (Alina Garmash and Vitaliy Mariash)
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